


The Mirror Effigy

by the_noble_bachelorette84



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF Molly, F/M, Locker Room, Mirrors, Post-Reichenbach, Sexy Fluff, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:59:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1447792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_noble_bachelorette84/pseuds/the_noble_bachelorette84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the Reichenbach Fall, emotions are still running high for those most instrumental to the deception. For no one does this prove truer than pathologist Molly Hooper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mirror Effigy

Molly’s body ached. Her shoulders were tight. Her whole body tense from the long shift. Why did she consistently agree to work such overtime? Sure, the money was great, and that was always helpful, but she was getting to the point where she just didn’t want to spend it on anything. She didn’t like to go out, didn’t have enough vacation time built up to go away for a while, which is what she truly needed, and she needed to save it for her honeymoon with Tom…assuming they would actually get married. He’d gotten fed up with her working so much and being too tired to interact with him when she wasn’t. He suggested some time apart, which suited her. She’d even taken off her engagement ring.   
She could find nothing to occupy her mind other than the events in, on, and around St. Bart’s approximately two years ago. The day she helped Sherlock Holmes fake his death to save lives. His presumed demise, with the aid of his brother, Mycroft, helped him to insert himself into Moriarty’s organization and take it down brick by terrorist brick. If not for me, that mad man’s henchmen would still be inflicting evil on the world, and I can’t even tell anyone because of national security! The game couldn’t, indeed, have played out without Molly! And what thanks did she get? Stiff shoulders with no one to rub them, and a heartache that no one could cure but a man who was off in distant lands securing peace for Harry, England, and St. George! Was that actually sexier to her than when he was just being a consulting detective? Maybe. But her heartache was destined, she feared, to be a chronic condition. Sherlock had never proved to be the type for sentiment. She was of no consequence to him in the context of anything more than friendship, and even that was a tenuous bond. She didn’t matter to Sherlock, no matter what he had told her that fateful day he’d asked for her help, and she’d have to find a way to live with that depressing fact. She wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that he considered her to be a dear friend that could someday turn into more. But the more she thought on the conversation and the circumstances surrounding it, the more skeptical she became about the possibility of everything turning out the way she hoped.  
Molly was finished with a double shift at the morgue. She walked into the women’s locker room, rubbing one of her shoulders herself, wondering if she should maybe invest on one of those electric back massagers. She walked to and opened her locker like she’d done on so many occasions to hang up her lab coat when a sight met her eyes that had the power to undo her. Reflected behind her in the mirror was none other than Sherlock Holmes, grinning kindly at her.   
Molly’s breath caught in her throat as she whipped around to meet directly the gaze of the man for whom she’d do anything, and damn near had.  
“Sherlock!”   
“Hello Molly. I trust you’re well?”  
“I am, more or less, I suppose.” She wasn’t going to lie to the man. There was no point, of course. She wasn’t going to pretend to be happy-go-lucky, all smiles Molly Hooper. Details of her un-wellness wouldn’t matter to him, of course, but he would know they were there. “What brings you to Bart’s? I’m sorry, I’m fresh out of corpses that bear your image.” She was feeling a bit sassy today, and was not about to just cow-tow to his every request…unless he asked her in that way he had…she probably would then, but she would try VERY hard to resist!   
“Well, Moriarty’s organization is all but disintegrated, and I’m really not needed for the rest of the grunt work. I’ve had Mycroft farm that out to his G-men. I’m back in London now, presumably for good. Apparently, there’s a formidable terror cell here, and I’m needed to uncover and eradicate it.”   
“Brilliant, Sherlock! That’s great!” She really was pleased at this news, and attempted enthusiasm, but there was something missing, whether just by fatigue, or by the assumption that he was just there to procure help for another case. “So, what do you need from me?”  
Sherlock furrowed his brow, confused. “Sorry?”  
“Well, you’ve been pulled out of whatever third-world shit-hole country you were in to come here and do a job of importance. I just assumed you needed me to provide you with some sort of aid. Remains? Diagnostics? What, then?”  
Sherlock’s gaze became one of sympathy mixed with confusion. “Molly, I’m sorry to have made you feel like you were just a cog in my work. You are, of course, invaluable to me for all the resources available to you, not least of those your mind, which I hold in highest regard, second only to my own. But honestly, are we not closer than that? I was honestly hoping for a slightly warmer welcome than this.”  
Molly was looking at indignant in the rear view. She was livid. He wanted a warm welcome. She’d show him one, red-hot. Hot with rage!  
“Oh, the incomparable Sherlock Holmes expects me to fall all over myself rejoicing at his return. Jigs should be danced at this joyous homecoming! Large neon signs and fireworks! Can’t forget those! Must call in some favors there. Have you told the Queen of your return! She’ll surely wish to have a ball in your honor!” Molly felt the harsh words spring like a geyser from her typically timid tongue. She had pent up this irritation for too long, like an itch that wouldn’t abate, and now, she was primed to scratch!  
“Molly, what has gotten into you?”  
“Not much, now you mention it, but I fail to see how my sex life relates to you being a complete cock who is unable to show the proper appreciation for anything and is incapable of friendship! Even though you hold no stock in such relationships as normal people do.”  
“What in the HELL is the matter with you? I’ve not even SEEN you in nearly two years. I come by to see how you’re doing. I hope that you’re here, because I AM a terrible friend and haven’t the slightest idea where you live, and I have truly missed you and actually wanted to see you! You’re the first person I’ve visited after John, which frankly went even WORSE that this reunion is going, if you can imagine it,” he reinforced the statement with a gentle pinch to his nose where John had head-butted him the night before, “and I’m met with sarcasm and bile. At least I was expecting it from the Serbs! Not from someone I care—“  
“Oh, now, Sherlock. Don’t be cruel! I can’t take you being so rotten as to lead me on any more! I know you aren’t interested in me. You don’t care about me, and you only said that I ‘counted’ because you needed me to help you. Two years is a long time to let that marinate in your head. Long nights over cold corpses. The fragility of life before me every moment of the day, my own mortality growing ever more apparent as the days pass, and rather than a desire to live and experience and create and love and be loved, I’ve cultivated a seed of bitterness into something the size of an oak. Bitterness born or your constant indifference, and yet here I stand in front of you, ready to do whatever you need of me. Whatever you need. To help you with a case. To clean your apartment. To do any deed that any normal bloke may ask of a woman, but that you probably don’t think twice about. You’re merely a vessel. You’re above the carnal desires of us lesser mortals. But far be it for me to question you, sir. Go on! What. Do. You. Need.”   
Molly stretched out her arms to indicate her sarcastic willingness to serve. But Sherlock just stood as still as a statue in front of her. He was holding back a tear in one eye, but could not corral the one in the other. Molly wanted to console and coddle the man before her who had never seemed more vulnerable to her. Not even the last time she’d seen him. But she held her ground. She gave away no hint of lost resolve. She was Gibraltar.   
He kept attempting to say things. Kept looking up into her eyes, still brown, though they felt fire red, and then looking away. He clenched his fists, let out a short but powerful sigh, and marched toward her with purpose. She worried at first that he was planning on slugging her, and maybe he wouldn’t have been completely unjustified to do so, but he softened the closer he got.  
“Do you want to know what I need Molly Hooper? I need the exact same thing I needed two years ago, standing not too far from where we are now.” He grabbed her head firmly under her jaw on either side and pulled her to him. He enveloped her mouth in a firm, sensual kiss, using his entire body to drive it home. Molly had lost the ability to form coherent thought. She knew she wouldn’t be able to resist anything he asked of her, but this was damn near close to the last thing she expected he would ask. If you could call it asking. “Demand” seemed to be a better fit.  
“What I need, in case you’ve forgotten, is you.” He said after he removed himself from her lips with a slightly embarrassing suctioning noise.   
She wanted to retort sharply. Wanted to slap his face for doing this. Even though it was a fantasy of hers for him to kiss her just like that. It had always been, but especially since she’d stumbled across a fan-made video enacting a theory of how Sherlock may have survived the fall from Bart’s roof. The stars of the video looked remarkably like herself and Sherlock, down to their fashion choices, which led her to believe that she must have known the user “SherlockRox221” personally! Probably Anderson…or maybe LeStrade! She told herself as she watched the video.   
Anyway, the clip showed Sherlock jumping from the roof while attached to a bungee cord, which pulls him back up the building where he deftly crashes through a window, unhooks himself from the climbing clip, straightens his coat, tousles his hair, and kisses the young woman in the mousy brown ponytail, lab coat, and somewhat tacky sweater (Did she really dress like that?), and struts away, staring back at her for a moment.  
It was all ludicrous, of course. Way over-complicated! Definitely Anderson, then! But she couldn’t help wishing that that was how it had gone down. She couldn’t believe he was standing here holding her like this, saying these things. She wasn’t going to let herself be taken in until she was certain.   
“So you need me? You need me like I’ve wanted you to need me for basically as long as I’ve known you? You suddenly want us to be…whatever that was there?” She confronted, waving at the space between them as if to indicate the mind blowing kiss they’d just shared.  
“Molly, I need you in so many ways. My time away from London was lonely, dangerous, uncomfortable, and simply unpleasant in every way you could imagine. I was tortured, beaten, chained up, starved, and nearly killed there at the end, and that’s just the physical worst. No one knew me. No one understood my quirks like you always have. I would sit of an evening in whatever vestibule I was calling home that night, be it penthouse or hovel, I’d have my evening tea and biscuits or coffee and tinned fruit and I’d wish you were there sitting across from me. Reading a book, or the paper, holding your drink or snack aloft in your hand and pausing your chewing when there was a particularly riveting section. I’ve never wanted to sit and read across from anyone apart from John, my best- well, former best friend, I suppose. I want to read, and eat, and sleep, and watch television, and make love with you, Molly Hooper! I want AND need these things. I’m desperate for them! Please forgive me for years of poor behavior and taking advantage of your feelings and taking for granted your help. Give me a chance to make it up to you! Please, just a chance.”  
There was no doubt Sherlock had done all these things and more to Molly. She wasn’t convinced he was being completely sincere, so she prodded him further.   
“Sherlock, you’re saying these things, things that I’ve wanted you to say since the moment I laid eyes on you. Before all the abuse you put me through, and the advantages you’ve perpetually taken of me. Since then, I’ve grown to have a little more respect for myself. I don’t want you. Not if you’re going to drop me when it suits your whim or when something less boring is happening. I don’t deserve the malice I’ve received in the past, especially recently, and I’m not going to stand for it any longer.” She thought she saw him turn the color of one of his famous tobacco ashes when she told him that she didn’t want him. That gave her a little rush of satisfaction.  
“Molly, I’m not going to pretend that I can be your kind of perfect overnight. I can’t. I’ve been this way for so long. It’s going to take a lot of work, but if you’re willing to help me and be patient and open with me, I’d like the opportunity to attempt to make you happy.”  
Molly knew his many flaws, and had seen them in action more often than she cared to enumerate. But somehow, standing here in front of him, a tired, pleading vulnerability in his eyes, those flaws faded into background noise around his utter perfection. The way he spoke to her was making her believe. Believe that maybe she could be happy for once in a relationship that she’d dreamt about for years and never thought would be available to her. Believe that maybe he could want her in all of her awkward, gawky ungainliness.   
“So, Sherlock, you’re actually serious about this? You actually want to be with me?”  
“Of course I do, Molly. Do you think I make a habit out of starting relationships for any other reason than actual attraction?”  
Molly chuckled, “I don’t even think you could be that cruel, Sherlock Holmes! That would be evil, indeed!”  
“And anyway, no such opportunity has arisen. It may come to that someday,” Molly gasped at him and pulled away.  
“Now, let me finish, Miss Hooper! IF, and only IF it comes to that, you will be the first to know.” He grabbed her left hand and kissed a knuckle, but dropped it quickly. “Unless you have someone else in your life?”  
Molly looked at Sherlock completely nonplussed. “Sorry?”  
“There’s a distinct indentation on your left ring finger that has never been there before. You’ve been in a serious relationship with someone and have been engaged for the past several months judging by the texture and color of the markings. Now in your line of work, I assume you would lock something that valuable up in your locker through your shift so as not to soil or lose it. That is a more likely assumption than that you’ve simply recently split up, although that’s the option I would prefer for my own selfish reasons.”  
Listening to him deduce her made her feel things she couldn’t describe. The thought of her image running through his head, being scrutinized. It made her feel as though her insides were melting.  
“Tom. Tom is his name. Well, was. I mean, he’s still alive, he’s not dead. But we’re not…he couldn’t handle me working so much. Despite the fact that I was doing all that work to make our life together easier. At least I thought that’s why I told myself I was throwing myself into my work.” She looked up at him with a glance full of meaning. “I always hoped you’d come back alive, Sherlock. I more than hoped. It was all I could think about, actually. I think Tom knew better than I did the real reason I never seemed to have time for him.”  
He brushed a lock of hair out of her face and behind her ear. “And do you have any regrets about those feelings, Molly?” He moved closer to her, his lips inching nearer her skin.  
She started the word “none,” but hardly got to finish it. She threw her lips onto his. He parted them eagerly to allow her in. She laced her fingers into his lush, dark hair, soft as silk. He held her body tight to his and she could feel his taught bulge against her lower abdomen. After a few glorious moments of blissful kissing, Sherlock broke away, breathing heavily.  
“So, Molly Hooper,” he panted, “can I take you to dinner tonight?”  
Molly sighed contentedly, “Well, I have to shower before we go anywhere. Can you wait?” she gave him a coy glance.  
“I suppose I could, but…maybe I should join you?”  
“No objections here!” she grinned from ear to ear.  
“Then, by all means, lead on, Miss Hooper!” he indicated the shower area of the locker room.  
She doffed her lab coat, letting it fall on the nearby bench. “Right this way, Mr. Holmes.”

end


End file.
